Philosophy

Sample from chapter #1: Sex in Judaism is a beautiful thing. It’s also terrible. When you do it at the right time, it’s amazing. God himself sits there watching you and jerks off while you’re going at it. When you climax, he does too. Did you know? The relationship between God...

Some questions I had about Judaism, I got answers that worked, to a point. There were explanations that fit within a larger framework. And as long as that framework was intact, the answers worked. "Why does the Torah tell us to do this or that?""Because God said so." Fair enough. I can struggle...

“No other religion claims to have experienced public revelation. Therefore, it’s a claim that is so outlandish, that it must have actually occurred because otherwise no one else would have been stupid enough to believe in it, or brazen enough to ‘introduce’ it into the cultural narrative.” Thus goes the...

From the back cover: Are you worried that someone from the secular world will ask you a question about Judaism that you don’t have an answer for? Are you heading out to a campus to inspire others about Judaism with only a tenuous amount of knowledge of it yourself? Are you concerned...

It all fell apart one day, and I do not get credit for doing so. The initiative came from outside myself. I did not have the inner strength to do the unthinkable, the fortitude to acknowledge failure, the resilience to be anything but what my current shitty life was. So it...

Having grown up deeply ingrained in the Orthodox Jewish world view, it’s a constant process for me to re-examine what I was taught. Some things obviously rubbed me the wrong way, and I questioned them as part of my journey. Other things were less aggravating, so I simply accepted them...

I have long had a tenuous relationship with Israel. Israelis as a collective bug the shit out of me. Rude, bureaucratic, with very little sense of tact, sophistication, or anything that I perceived as culture. I never really was Israeli – despite being born there, Hebrew is my second...

“Judaism is about relationships,” sayeth the narrative. “It’s about aligning yourself with truth. It’s about becoming more like God, so that you can connect with God (how that doesn’t work is the subject of a separate article).” Furthermore, “Only dim witted people, like women and children (a pretty direct paraphrase...

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And water. And light. And trees. And all the other stars and the moon and the sun too. Yes, in that order, motherfuckers, it says so right there in the book. And the fishes. And the animals. And the...

If you believe in God from a philosophical point of view, you shouldn’t need any emotional scaffolding to keep things up. The absurdity of one-off inspirational stories of any kind should be obvious to even the most casual of contemplators, and yet it forms a huge part of religious culture. I...